Oh indeed what a night thas was, riotous, like you say. Got crushed a bit during the first songs, and looked for a more quiet place, if that was possible, to go loose without being splattered.

I thought Richard and Brett were unbelievable. Richard's performance was perfect, doing a lot of different arrangements. The poor chap, don't know if he enjoyed it. Brett and Mat smiled, but Simon and Neil were pokerfaced as usual. Poor Neil, who's idea was it to let him play the intro to The Wild Ones, he fucked it up, LOL.

Highlights for me were He's gone, The asphalt world and The 2 of us. Incredible how that sounded, and how piano and keys worked well with guitars. Wildest moment by far was Metal Mickey, I went completely mental. Oh, the sight of Brett hanging over the first rows. What energy!

The public in the arena was very Suede! Never saw such a sleazy and kooky audience, Trash was the perfect soundtrack.

And then came the end, one of my faves, Saturday Night. All I could do was cry and gasp for air, what a beautiful moment for everybody.

A dream, a vision, a hallucination, over not knowing if it really happened. No goodbyes, no greetings, they just strolled of and were gone.

Also it was fantastic meeting you all. Thanks Sunshine for everything. Discobunny, Ruyin, Jan, Florence, Arno (?) it was great sharing the experience with you.

Sorry I didn't do much socialising in there (only said a quick hello to Jan and Sunshine before TNP came on(yes that was me!) ) - was with friends who I'd not seen in almost a year so spent a fair bit of time catching up.

In danger of going off topic but I'm gutted I missed Kerensa particularly - would have loved to have said hello. Is she ever on here at all?

Well i'm not sure how much Rich enjoyed it myself - his playing was as storming as ever but at times he didn't look that happy or engaged and there was none of the real axe-grinding and foot stomping of old (did he actually smile once??) - and the body lanuage between him and Brett seemed way off - they barely looked at eachother throughout and whenever Brett came near Richard always backed away towards Simon's drums - he NEVER used to do that - was always front of stage.... Maybe i'm way off by saying this but let's look at the facts:

Brett spent every interview around 'Singles' in 2003 saying how great Bernard was in Suede and said nothing about Richard's contribution - I actually thought that was quite weird and disrespectful at the time.... I know he had to talk about Bernard because it was a retrospective but bearing in mind he had fallen out so badly with the bloke to be lavishing praise on Bernard and talking about him like a mesiah was pretty odd and hinted that he already had ideas in place for his next project at that point...
He split Suede then almost immediately got back with Bernard - if I was Richard who we know was one of the most badly affected by the split I would've been pretty pissed off and felt pretty shitty if someone had done that to me
then recently when asked about a reunion Brett said "I email Mat and Simon - and see Bernard occasionally" - no mention of Mr Oakes...

It's ok Gareth - I was there before TNP came on and I spotted no fucker in there that I knew to socialise with!!! - think u were all deliberately hiding from me !!!

I love Richards playing, songwriting, personality, CU is my fav album, and I enjoyed every note i could hear from him at the gig on Saturday. Hope this is shining back somehow onto Mr Oakes. The love, the admiratuion, the praise... hope he will be (IS) fine.